When Amazon foolishly yanked 1984 from thousands of Kindles, Justin Gawronski’s electronic notes for a summer assignment became useless.

I bet the notes were rehashed from Sparknotes or some external source. He’s a high school student with a Kindle. Obviously not someone that does a lot of work or analytical thought.

“As part of his studies of “1984,” Mr. Gawronski had made copious notes in the book. After Amazon remotely deleted “1984,” those notes were rendered useless because they no longer referenced the relevant parts of the book. The notes are still accessible on the Kindle 2 device in a file separate from the deleted book, but are of no value. For example, a note such as “remember this paragraph for your thesis” is useless if it does not actually a reference a specific paragraph. By deleting “1984” from Mr. Gawronski’s Kindle 2, this is the position in which Amazon left him. Mr. Gawronski now needs to recreate all of his studies.”

If the kid actually did do the work, then there wouldn’t be such a fuss. Can’t remember what you read or wrote? What are you, senile at 17? Annotation doesn’t mean underline every damn word. The quotes and ideas are still the same. Orwell isn’t changing the text daily; he’s been dead for 59 years.

Reread the damn book and shut up. It’s most likely only a page off. Such a difficult task for a student to handle. And annotations like “remember this paragraph for your thesis” is useless. He’s going to have to reread it again to dissect the paragraph, so anything about losing “valuable” notes is irelevant.

I’m just going to say what’s on my mind: the kid deserved it. His fault for buying a $300 Kindle to read a $5 book. How many books can one get for $300? A lot. Especially those dime a dozen books. Which does include 1984. But wait, 1984 is free online in e-book format.